Tag: Mind Games

This week in Echo High School, we are talking about the “Mind Games” we play with friends. Our perspective on others is very easily distorted. Think about how envy, judgment, criticism, and jealousy color our perspectives on other people. What you choose to believe about others has a dramatic impact on your relationships. You can choose to believe the best, give the benefit of the doubt, trust people until they prove your trust is misplaced. Or you can choose to believe the worst, be skeptical and cynical and suspicious of others. Much of our success in relationships comes down to mind games. For example – if you believe that you can and should try to control those people around you, you will always resort to manipulation and coercion to get your way. If you believe that love is something that is only valuable when freely chosen, you will refuse to manipulate and allow other people to retain control of their choices. Or if you believe that someone else in your life winning means that you lose, then it is impossible to be genuinely excited about the success of others. What lies mess us up? I think each of these distorted perspectives are like a ditch on either side of the road. When you go to one extreme or the other, your relationships run into mud. Try to find the balance and watch your relationships improve.

1. It’s all about ME…or it’s all about THEM. We have a harmful tendency to focus on our rights in a relationship instead of our responsibilities. This is true in your relationship with your church, with your friends, and it will be true in your marriage: any time you reverse responsibilities and rights, you will be frustrated and disappointed. A huge mistake, but a very common mistake is to get these two things mixed up. We talk in our culture all about our “rights.” We have the right to be treated nicely and to be fawned over and to be appreciated and recognized. We have been told our whole lives how special we are, and so it is no wonder that we expect everyone to be about the business of satisfying our needs. We have the right to be happy, if everyone would just get with the program of making us happy. It always seems when our needs are being met correctly that everyone else is to blame, and we focus solely on the problems with their character. Here is the truth: as long as you focus on your rights or your needs being met in a relationship, you will be disappointed. This is not how things are designed to work. The truth is you are responsible for your own character and the needs of others. If you can focus on your responsibilities, you will be so much happier because you will only worry about things that are in your control. In any relationship, the only element you have any control over is you. You can control your character, your reactions, and your affections. Too often, we want everyone else to change according to our needs and we come into relationships with this expectation. When we are frustrated because this set of priorities does NOT work, we will try to force it through manipulation. This is when we try to control the people around us. Manipulation uses weapons like guilt and fear to control others. You don’t have any legitimate control over other people. Change yourself – grow. Don’t try to change the people around you. You will only resort to manipulation if you do because you will be frustrated by failure.

2. It’s none of my business…or everything is my business. There is a ditch on either side of this road. Check out Galatians 6:1-5 – bear one another’s burdens, and fulfill the law of Christ. There is so much in this passage. You see that this passage teaches we have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters in Christ to help them out and have their backs. Sometimes we assume that “it’s not my business.” This is really just a thing we say, because we make it our business by judging and gossiping anyway. We have a responsibility for the people we love. It is to protect them, to truly have their backs and look out for them. This passage says our responsibility is to “restore them gently.” This is not talking about criticism or rebuke; but about admonishment. It is a positive thing. The Proverb says “the wounds of a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” That means that the people that tell you what you want to hear don’t care about your nearly as much as the people who are courageous enough to tell you what you need to hear. But this passage also reminds us to check yourself, to examine your own heart and not overdo it with being everyone else’s conscience. This passage is not an invitation for you to go around sticking your nose in everyone else’s business. It reminds us that our character should be our primary concern, even when we are looking to the needs of others. Balance is key. Know when it is your business and when it is not your business. How can you tell? Well, if you can actually help or you are in a position of authority or proximity, it might be your business. This passage is counter-cultural for a lot of reasons, at least it is not how many of us are comfortable in the way we handle relationships. Love wins in environments of open accountability. When we hear people talking about others, often, we remain silent. Either we like hearing the gossip, or we don’t want to get in other’s business. Unity is your business. We become accomplices in the gossip if we don’t shut it down. If you shut your ears, they will shut their mouths. Negativity is dangerous; it is a highly contagious disease that infects the heart.
3. If I ignore it, it will go away or get better…or it is my job to point out everyone else’s issues. Another lie we believe about relationships is that sources of conflict can be ignored and they will go away. This is not how it works. Hurt does not go away, it grows and festers and becomes ugly like an infected wound. Small offenses can be overlooked, but often the best thing to do is address an issue directly. Face conflict, don’t run from it. Tell the truth. Fight fair. Deal with issues openly, don’t hide it, don’t stuff it, and don’t avoid it. We often hope a problem will just go away if we ignore it. It will not go away; it will just get worse and the longer you wait to talk about the more awkward it will be to have the conversation. The key is to balance truth and love. One without the other makes conflict destructive. Remember that GRACE is the face love wears when it sees imperfection. Choose to show grace to the people around you. Let me caution you here: a critical spirit is seriously dangerous. It seems to be a widespread practice where fault-finding and criticism is the normal way to address others’ imperfection. We tend to view ourselves through a lens of our strengths and successes, and judge others through a lens of weaknesses and mistakes. Friends will let us down and they will disappoint us. Sometimes we will be unhappy with their choices or their behavior. How we decide to react to such a situation is largely determined by how we have chosen to think about people.

Thoughts to ponder:
-Are you modelling healthy relationships for your teen, including healthy conflict resolution? Remember that what we do will always have a greater influence than what you say.
-Discuss with your teenager: how healthy do you think your friendships are? How about our family relationships? What could improve on my part? What could improve on your part?
-Do you struggle more with avoiding potential conflict, or with sticking your nose in other people’s business? Why?

Echo High school started a new series this Sunday talking about Mind Games. Romans 12:1-2 teaches that the key to transformation is renewing our minds: changing destructive patterns of thought into something that follows the mind of Christ. It means learning to think correctly about God and ourselves. This is tough because sometimes our mind is our worst enemy. People say things like: “It’s just in your head…” but what is in our heads matters! What you believe influences how you behave.

Check out 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 – Paul is talking about the struggle he has to help people understand the Gospel and his ministry. He is struggling against and arguing against “false teachers” that are defaming him and telling lies. You might call this a propaganda war; it is about which voices will be most influential on the beliefs of others. To this conflict, Paul says this: “For though we are human, we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.”Paul is talking about spiritual warfare as a mind game – a contest of ideas.

It was true back then and it is true now – there are forces at work in the world that seek to control the way you think, and some of those forces are sinister and harmful. I have talked with so many people that are plagued by destructive patterns of thought – held prisoner to lies, deceptions, and false assumptions about God, about themselves, and about others. Many times people are ignorant about the spiritual dimensions of such thoughts. What happens in your mind makes a very big difference in your life.

Behind our behavior is our worldview – the deep rooted beliefs at our core. I am not trying to imply that changing your patterns of thought is an easy thing to achieve, like you can just flip a switch and think differently. Paul uses the word “stronghold” on purpose. A stronghold is a fortress, a place of refuge from attack. Such fortified cities were very important in the ancient world, and Paul’s audience knows to what he is referring. One of the most famous “strongholds” of the ancient world is the city Masada, a place so well fortified it held off the Roman war machine for a long time in the first century. This image would have helped Paul’s original audience imagine an obstacle very difficult to overcome. Some of our destructive patterns of thought run deep – they are the root of insecurity, dysfunction, addiction, etc.Some of these patterns of thought are generations old – it is the way you were taught to think by your parents, who were taught something similar by their parents, and so on. Changing such deeply rooted patterns of thought is hard work. You cannot begin to live the truth until you believe the truth, and you cannot believe the truth until you hear the truth. Our culture is constantly telling its story and propagating its version of reality. this is why it is so important to read scripture and see and understand the Kingdom of God. It is a different way of looking at reality. Mind games matter. What you believe determines how you behave. Your core beliefs influence your actions, reaction, and attitudes. These core beliefs change slowly. They are deeply held and ingrained convictions that we hold close to our hearts.

Bringing down a stronghold is a war of attrition. Overcoming a stronghold is going to involve a siege. The Romans laid siege to the Sicarii at Masada for months before they could take the city. In a siege, sometimes you have to starve the enemy out. It is a war of attrition, it isn’t fun, it isn’t fast, but it is effective. How would you do this in spiritual warfare? It would mean blocking access to the food or the fuel for certain destructive patterns of thought. We live in a world where we have access to so many avenues of information. Much of this is very influential on our thoughts – some of it even has the goal of controlling your mind and shaping your worldview. Marketing is a mind game. It is about the battle of ideas, the power of suggestion. It is ultimately about control. It is about getting people to do what you want them to do. We can convince ourselves or be convinced that something that is untrue is true. Sometimes these sources of information are feeding destructive and unhealthy patterns of thought.

Follow me on this: if you are struggling with this attitude of “lack” that feeds a materialistic and shallow lifestyle, you should probably be careful about fashion magazines and trips to the shopping mall. If watching stick-thin actresses pretend to be average people on T.V. makes you feel fat and provokes your insecurity – you should probably watch something different. If you are struggling with lust or looking at women as objects, but you are not addressing your pornography addiction, nothing is going to change anytime soon. Some strongholds need to be starved! If facebook feeds your “drama” addiction – unplug. There are some behaviors or compulsions that are rooted in a spiritual stronghold – which is a deep system of thought or belief. You cannot change them until you change the way you think.

Food for discussion/thought:
*We all deal with destructive patterns of thought in different ways. What are some “mind games” that you struggle with? (Critical thoughts, insecurity, pride, envy, jealousy, shame, depression, doubt, lust, prejudice, etc.?)Can you identify some harmful thought patterns that need to be adjusted in light of the claims of Jesus?
*Do you agree that core beliefs change slowly? Why do you think this is?
*In your mind, can you think of any strongholds that you need to stop feeding?